butter bath and light-brown
onions; a stuffed goose neck, bursting of flavor; cheese pie twice the
depth of the fork that cut in; coffee in large cups. More cracking
of nuts, interspersed with raisins. Ada, cunningly enveloped in a
much-too-large apron, helping Mrs. Turkletaub to clear it all away.

Smoking there in his chair beside the dining-room window, rain the
unrelenting threnody of the day, Nicholas, fed, closed his eyes to the
rhythm of their comings and goings through the swinging door that led to
the kitchen. Comings--and--goings--his mother who rustled so cleanly of
starch--Ada--clear--yes, that was it--clear as a mountain stream. Their
small laughters--comings--goings--

It was almost dusk when he awoke, the pink-shaded piano lamp already
lighted in the parlor beyond, the window shade at his side drawn and an
Afghan across his knees. It was snug there in the rosied dusk. The women
were in the kitchen yet, or was it again? Again, he supposed, looking
at his watch. He had slept three hours. Presently he rose and sauntered
out. There was coffee fragrance on the air of the large white kitchen,
his mother hunched to the attitude of wielding a can opener, and at the
snowy oilclothed table, Ada, slicing creamy slabs off the end of a cube
of Swiss cheese.

"Sleepyhead," she greeted, holding up a sliver for him to nibble.

And his mother: "That was a good rest for you, son? You feel better?"

"Immense," he said, hunching his shoulders and stretching his hands down
into his pockets in a yawny well-being.

"I wish, then, you would put another leaf in the table for me. There's
four besides your father coming over from Aunt Gussie's. I just wish you
would look at Ada. For a girl that don't have to turn her hand at home,
with two servants, and a laundress every other week, just look how handy
she is with everything she touches."

The litter of Sunday-night supper, awaiting its transfer to the
dining-room table, lay spread in the faithful geometry of the cold,
hebdomadal repast. A platter of ruddy sliced tongue; one of noonday
remnants of cold chicken; ovals of liverwurst; a mound of potato salad
crisscrossed with strips of pimento; a china basket of the stuffed
dates, all kissed with sugar; half of an enormously thick cheese cake;
two uncovered apple pies; a stack of delicious raisin-stuffed curlicues,
known as _"schneken,"_ pickles with a fern of dill across them (Ada's
touch, the dill); a dish of stuffed eggs wi